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person1963–

Andrew Roberts

Disciplines:
britain
history
history/churchill
wwii

Summary

British historian — Hoover Institution senior fellow — author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny (2018), Napoleon: A Life (2014), and Masters and Commanders — the leading popular biographer of Churchill and Napoleon in the English-speaking world.

Core Contribution

Creates the most thoroughly researched one-volume Churchill biography — Roberts's Churchill: Walking with Destiny used King George VI's diaries and other sources unavailable to previous biographers and is the standard account for general readers.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Is openly monarchist and Tory in his historical writing — does not pretend to the neutrality that American academic historians perform; his political convictions are part of his analytical framework rather than hidden biases
  • Had access to King George VI's diary for the Churchill biography — the diary contains private assessments of Churchill that no other biographer had seen, and it confirms Churchill's essential qualities as Roberts had argued

Notable Works & Achievements

The Holy Fox: A Biography of Lord Halifax

Hitler and Churchill

Masters and Commanders

Napoleon: A Life

Churchill: Walking with Destiny

Historical Influences

John Keegan A.J.P. Taylor

Intellectual Lineage

London Cambridge British historical writing traditionHoover Institution

Contemporaries & Peers

Niall Ferguson Max Hastings Boris Johnson

Minds Influenced

Churchill biography

Intellectual Posterity

Churchill: Walking with Destiny Napoleon: A Life Roberts as Churchill-Napoleon biographer

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